What Type Of Backpacker Are You?

Backpacking has changed dramatically over the last thirty years, and so have the backpackers themselves. What was once lazily reduced to one stereotype, the young budget traveller with a battered rucksack, flip flops and a questionable vest, has evolved into a whole ecosystem of travel tribes, subcultures and wonderfully recognisable characters.

Flashpackers, digital nomads, gap year travellers, volunteer travellers, party backpackers, spiritual seekers, ski-season wanderers, family backpackers and old-school overlanders may all travel slightly differently, but they still orbit the same restless desire to see the world independently.

Spend enough time in hostels, on long-distance buses or in backpacker bars on KSR, and you start to recognise them in the wild. So, in the spirit of entirely unscientific field research as we crouch with a pair of binoculars behind a pile of abandoned hostel flip flops, here are some of the most common types of backpacker you are likely to meet on the road.

Although every backpacker is different, certain travel styles, personalities and habits seem to emerge wherever independent travellers gather. Some are based on budget, some on attitude, some on experience and some are simply stereotypes that have become part of backpacking folklore. If you’ve ever wondered what type of backpacker you are, chances are you’ll recognise yourself somewhere on this list.

The Gap Year Traveller

This is the group that most people generally associate with the stereotype of backpacking. This species of backpacker are either about to start uni or have just graduated, and often stumble around the usual gringo or banana pancake trail on a traditional RTW ticket, wide eyed, guide book in hand and oversized backpack permanently attached to their semi hunched spines. Usually found in the backpacker ghettos of Khao San Road in Bangkok, they can often be found being really original by queuing up for the quintessential dreadlock hairstyle everyone else has and being chased by pushy touts and tuk tuk drivers.

The Route Hacker

This nervous tribe are the modern offspring of the old guidebook fanatic. Where their ancestors refused to travel anywhere that wasn’t recommended in the latest Lonely Planet, or at the very least had a ‘recommended in LP’ sign outside, this highly evolved species now places complete faith in TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube travel vlogs and Top 10 Hidden Gem articles written by people who have never actually been there.

Every hostel, café, viewpoint and sunset is meticulously researched months in advance, colour-coded into Google Maps and optimised for maximum efficiency. They speak proudly about travelling independently, yet are quietly terrified of making a spontaneous decision that hasn’t first been validated by at least three influencers and a 4.8-star rating.

Their greatest fear is accidentally discovering somewhere for themselves.

The Full Moon Partier

What do you mean there are temples in Mexico? This subset of the gap yearer follows the party scene in every country they visit. Foregoing all the little inconsequential things most countries have to offer such as temples, history, gourmet food and culture, this group simply heads to the nearest backpacker bar and proceeds to drink it dry. Often plans a migratory route around the world based on the timings of the full moon parties in Thailand or the carnivals and festivals of South or Central America. They usually like to stay in major cities or chilled out beaches (as long as it has a few bars and a good party scene). This group is usually best observed early in the morning, when they are recovering from a hangover in the cheapest accommodation a particular place has. Occasionally returns home to visit an STI clinic or found in captivity on one of those banged up abroad programmes on TV after losing all intelligent thought after a few drinks.

The Chelsea Traveller

This relatively rare tribe of backpacker is epitomized by their uniform of  rugger shirts and designer clothing from Jack Wills, their guffawing friends Tarquin and Rupert and the sincere expression on their faces as they mingle with the poor people in the developing world, usually by doing some form of voluntourism experience for a day or by dressing up in full traditional native dress for a photo op. These upper class buffoons are often found navigating their way around the old colonies on a sponsorship from mummy and daddy’s credit card, attempting to find themselves as they slum it by not eating in the fanciest restaurants.

The Flashpacker

Usually in their late 20’s or early 30’s, this group are often professional, probably on a career break, and have more money to spend than the average backpacker. They travel in the same independent way, but just have more means to travel with a little more comfort. Favouring boutique hotels and more comfortable accommodation and transport over the usual hostels and budget travel stops of the gap yearer or backpacker, their clothes are often branded and they travel with the latest smartphones and technology to help ease them into their cultural immersion.

The Snap Packer

This sub group of travellers can belong to any of the traditional or emerging backpacking tribes. They travel in the same way as any other backpacker, and often for the same reasons, but due to career or life constraints they simply limit their backpacking travels to shorter month or two month trips, often staying in one country instead of hopping through a region. They can usually be spotted clustered around wifi hotspots trying to figure out what the must see sights in a given destination are.

The One-Bag Backpacker

Closely related to the ultralight hiking community, this backpacker has elevated packing light into something resembling an Olympic event.

Possessing only a toothbrush, one spare pair of underwear and an alarming sense of moral superiority, they will happily spend forty-five minutes explaining how they travelled for eighteen months with just seven kilograms of luggage while silently judging your outrageous decision to bring a second T-shirt.

Capable of fitting an entire life into a bag smaller than your average Ryanair personal item, they view unnecessary possessions with genuine horror and treat every extra gram as a personal failure. Nobody knows how they survive. They are equally unsure why everyone else insists on carrying so much pointless luxury, such as socks.

The Solo Female Backpacker.

Solo travellers can appear in all groups of backpackers, but there is a very specific sub group within this solo tribe that deserve special mention, the solo female backpacker. This large tribe of slogan chanting travellers somehow manages to fit the words solo female travel into every social media post and conversation, despite having spent the previous three weeks travelling with the same seven people from the hostel, and they firmly believe they are smashing stereotypes from the 1960s and think that the concept of women travelling alone is apparently still shocking.

It is important to note that not all female backpackers fall into this category, both men and women travel solo all the time, but it takes a very special breed of woman to belong to this very select group. You see this group is defined not by travel, not by how they travel or the lack of people they travel with, but only and very specifically by their gender.

They are obviously braver, fiercer, more fearless, more independent, more empowered than any other traveller because they are female, and only because they are female. They are women. Female. Female travellers, and women. Did I mention they are female? And this is the only defining characteristic that matters.

The solo female backpacker isn’t any different to the other female backpackers they share hostels, backpacker bars and local transport with, apart from the fact that they wear their gender as a badge of honour, as if by the miracle of them happening to be a female elevates them above everyone else who also happens to be backpacking solo solely on the basis that they are a woman.

That’s female, in case you missed it, and solo.

This magical quality of being alone, and female of course, obviously makes travel much more difficult for them than their male counterparts – well, in their eyes at least if not in reality – and they make sure everyone knows it by ensuring that their gender status is declared at every opportunity in an effort to show how brave and empowered they are for battling against the stereotype that women are weak and unable to handle the dangers of travelling. They are often completely bereft of any understanding of reality and oblivious to the fact that they alone are the ones reinforcing this stereotype, and just cannot understand that no one else really cares anymore.

The SKI’er

This epic group of legends are older travelers.  Many of whom have retired and have decided to sod their ungrateful offspring and spend the kids inheritance (hence the name SKI’er), sell up and blow their savings on an epic trip or two! And why not? You’ve worked hard all your life, you’ve earned it! It is better to blow all your money now on something worthwhile before the government steals it all to pay for your nursing home care when your mind is too far gone to realise what’s happening! Proof that you can backpack at any age and inspiration to us all! Go for it grandma!

The Digital Nomad

Once a rare and mysterious creature, the digital nomad has now become one of the dominant backpacker species. Having escaped the fluorescent-lit cubicle of their former existence with the distinctive cry of ‘quit your job and travel‘, they now roam the coffee shops and co-working spaces of Chiang Mai, Bali and Medellín armed with a MacBook and a productivity app for every conceivable task.

Unlike the backpackers of old who simply travelled until the money ran out or they could find work on the road, this tribe has mastered the art of convincing themselves they are ‘location independent entrepreneurs’ while failing to make enough money to refill their reusable coffee cup. A small and revered elite genuinely do build thriving businesses while travelling the world, whispered about in backpacker circles like mythical creatures. The vast majority, however, can usually be found redesigning their website for the seventeenth time, creating another productivity system, optimising their morning routine and proudly announcing they are ‘building something exciting’ while surviving almost entirely on cheap freelance gigs that exist outside of their ‘business’, and whatever pennies they can manage to eke out from their blogs with endless affiliate schemes. Mostly they survive on the unwavering belief that this next LinkedIn post will finally change everything.

The Backpackfluencer

One of the fastest-growing and most vocal tribes on the road, the Backpackfluencer is absolutely convinced they are just one viral video away from turning backpacking into a full-time career. Similar to the digital nomad, they can often be found in co working spaces pestering business owners for free stuff and desperately hoping that one day, some cash might turn up too,

Armed with a drone, tripod, ring light, suspiciously white trainers and lips that have clearly seen more filler than a plasterers tool bag, they can often be found holding up everybody else’s dinner while photographing it from seventeen different angles before declaring it ‘the best hidden gem in Asia.’

Every viewpoint requires multiple takes. Every street becomes a personal runway. Every local market somehow turns into a fashion shoot. Travelling companions are repeatedly instructed to ‘walk naturally’ for the fourteenth time, while increasingly bewildered locals wonder why someone has been filming themselves walking down the same alleyway for the last forty-five minutes.

Despite loudly insisting they ‘travel differently’, they somehow manage to visit exactly the same cafés, viewpoints and hidden gems as every other Backpackfluencer on the planet, just to make sure they can tick off having the exact same photo in their feed.

The Spiritual Backpacker

The modern version of the hippy, this long haired tribe of backpacker can be found boring everyone in the hostel senseless by waffling nonstop at how at one with the universe they are. Can often be found amongst the spiritual retreats of India or Asia, learning about the ancient traditions and religions of the world and trying to meditate. They usually subsist on a diet of fruit and vegetables and are terrified of anyone who eats meat. Anyone encountering this species in the wild have to play the pronoun guessing game and risk the spiritual backpacker’s rage when they inevitably get it wrong, but their high horse and lack of energy from their legume heavy diet prevents them from doing too much damage. and they will often retreat to the safety of their group and pull out a guitar.

The Eat Pray Love Backpacker

This sub group of the spiritual backpacker are predominantly middle aged housewives bored with their lives, still worshipping at the altar of an overly saccharine paperback and bad movie adaptation over a decade after its release. Descending on Ubud in Bali like a plague of locusts every tourist season, they come to reconnect with the earth and discover their inner selves. They mercifully disappear on a yoga or spiritual retreat for most of the day, only emerging to sip their wheatgrass smoothies or mocha coffees, and wittering at how removed from it all they are before they stick their faces back in their brand new iPads and spend all day in a café with free wifi. This sub group of traveller is well known for a complete lack of irony.

The Wellness Backpacker

An evolutionary offshoot of the old Spiritual Backpacker, this increasingly common species has replaced incense and tie-dye with activewear, expensive water bottles and an encyclopaedic knowledge of adaptogens.

Usually found in Bali, Tulum or anywhere with a smoothie bowl costing more than the local daily wage, they move between cacao ceremonies, ice baths, breathwork sessions, sound healing, red light therapy and dopamine detox retreats in an endless quest to optimise every conceivable aspect of their wellbeing. They firmly believe their nervous system has finally been regulated, right up until the hostel Wi-Fi drops below three bars.

Often observed explaining the importance of ‘living naturally’ while ordering imported superfoods through an app and documenting their digital detox on Instagram.

The Bragpacker

This type of backpacker can belong to any one of the other groups, usually using their impressive camouflage skills to blend in, but are easily identified by their strong air of pompous arrogance. It doesn’t matter where you have been or what you have done, they have been and done one better. They just have to turn everything into a competition instead of just letting people tell their stories and listening before telling their own.

The Begpacker

Not to be confused with buskers or artists using their talent to earn money, this breed of traveller are the scavengers of the backpacker world. Parasitic in nature with a belief that everyone and anyone should fund their round the world trip apart from themselves. Usually bereft of any natural talent the begpacker nonetheless possesses a superior feeling of arrogance and privilege. Some have obtained the ability to use the internet to beg for money on sites like Go Fund Me, while many will simply fall back on their lazy nature and can be found in backpacker hotspots like Khao San Road, simply siting by the side of the road and begging for money to fund their travels.

The Backpacker Traitor

This seemingly innocent species were introduced into hostels and backpacker environments a number of years ago, drawn to the ‘authentic culture’ by their booking apps, they were instantly recognisable by their brightly coloured hardshell luggage and the distant sound of plastic wheels clattering against unsuitable pavements and cobbles, and were duly roasted by other backpackers as being a backpacker traitor. But this species stuck around, establishing its own nests within the backpacker hubs as more and more pre booked app lovers turned up with their wheely cases behind them. Now they are heavily integrating with the indigenous backpacker tribes, establishing their dominance by taking up all the space in the lockers and bins with their massive suitcases.

The Family Packer

This group of backpacker travels as a family unit. Often one or both of the parents have been an experienced backpacker in their own right before breaking off from their own tribe to form a little one of their own. Often found in family friendly tourist spots such as a zoo or public park in an attempt to appease the notoriously fragile and hard to please baby backpacker, the female of the species often carries a backpack with a specially adapted baby carrier on it, whilst the male of the species wears a constantly harassed facial expression and is weighed down by up to six times as much stuff as he used to be as he carries the females and the baby backpackers belongings along with his own. He can often be identified when away from the family unit by the cloying smell of baby sick and clothing covered with a variety of thrown food induced stains.

The Bear Grylls Backpacker

This type of backpacker is often found running off into the nearest jungle or desert as far away from the touristy crowds as possible.

They eschew tour groups with a vehement passion and are usually found looking for a beach or island that hasn’t yet been filled with high rise hotels or partying full moon worshipers.  If hiking to Everest base camp in Nepal, this group of backpacker may be so focused on their adventurer status they will have a tendency to run off when the guide finishes the trek at base camp and attempt the ascent to the peak on their own.

The Bear Grylls backpacker can sometimes disappear for long periods of time and then  be found weeks or months later emerging from a jungle or desert, having survived off the land and old ration packs and looking like an extra from an old Rambo movie. If you see this reclusive creature during this re emergence phase don’t be afraid of them, they can be lured back to civilisation with the smell of a good bacon butty and a mango juice or possibly a Tiger beer.

Be warned, this reclusive creature may or may not have a tendency to strip off and jump into an icy lake for no reason.

The Stamp Collector

This peculiar group of backpacker is barely one step up from a package tourist. Considers even the slightest stopover in a country’s airport as having ‘done’ that country, and can put another tick on their list of places they have visited. Usually starts every conversation with the number of countries they have been to and considers a brief transit time in a city airport to be sufficient to have a cultural understanding of an entire country. This species is loved by the mainstream media for their ability to generate an easy headline, but are under threat from unexplained bouts of irritable violence from other backpackers.

The Voluntourist

With a complete lack of any irony, professional skills or qualifications, this naive group of backpackers still expect to travel the world and cuddle a baby member of an endangered species, teach underprivileged kids or perform open heart surgery on sick people in the third world. Can often be identified from the red stain on their shirts from a bleeding heart and an extremely patronizing, patriarchal view toward all the little poor people in the world.

They are perfect prey for the predators that lurk within the voluntourism industry, just waiting to pounce on these wide eyed, eager young pups as they emerge into the world of travelling. When these predators strike, they will relieve them of vast sums of money and drop them in the middle of nowhere and tell them to dig a ditch for a project that has absolutely no benefit to the local population, then ignore them as they complain that the camp has no hotel, hot running water or satellite TV.

On returning home this unfortunately large sub group of backpackers will promptly put up a new profile picture on all their social media of them cuddling a tiger or other endangered animal or posing with a group of poor children on their laps, and will bore everyone senseless by reciting at every opportunity about that week they spent helping out all the poor kids in the third world. Because as volunteers, that obviously makes them a much, much better person.

The Born Again Tourist

Usually followed by a chorus of ‘aww bless’, this slowly growing group of backpackers can be found emerging from their comfort zones as they are lured away from their air conditioned tour group coaches and all inclusive resorts by the promise of real travel and adventure.

Having spent their entire lives on 2 week all inclusive holiday resorts, they see backpackers at some of the sites their tour group has been taken to and marvel at their ability to get there on their own, stay as long as they want and for a fraction of the price as they are herded back on the bus like sheep. Usually found trying to infiltrate themselves into one of the other backpacker tribes, they are often overly happy at how brave and independent they are being, but these imposters can be identified by their use of archaic travellers cheques and security bum bags. Very jittery and easily scared at first, these newly emerging backpackers occasionally scurry back to the comforts of a tour group and can often be found in a comfortable chain hotel. More often than not, full cultural immersion into one of the other backpacker tribes is attained with time.

We Are All Backpackers

Of course, the truth is that most backpackers are never just one type. You might start as a nervous gap year traveller, become a budget backpacker, drift into flashpacking when your back starts objecting to top bunks, spend a few years working remotely, then eventually find yourself travelling with children, better luggage and a deep suspicion that you have somehow become the responsible adult in the hostel.

That is how backpacking works. It changes as you do.

The labels are fun because there is usually just enough truth in them to make us laugh, wince or immediately think of someone we met in Thailand in 2007. But beneath the pub crawls, private rooms, yoga retreats, camera gear, ski seasons, spreadsheets, spiritual awakenings and questionable travel trousers, the same backpacker spirit remains. We are still travellers driven by curiosity, independence, adaptability and the desire to see the world on our own terms.

So laugh at the tribes, recognise yourself in a few of them and gently roast your mates for the rest. Just remember that whatever type of backpacker you are, the label matters far less than the spirit behind it.

The backpack was never the important part. The spirit was.